Halloween
WHOOOOOOOOH!...
WHOOOOOOOOH!...
enough of that...
hello mortals...Ghost of Mensforth here, endlessly patrolling the rampards of Castle Kenton Bar, maintaining his lonely vigil...
Now on this night of halloween I have been giving thought to those days of long ago when we celebrated halloween, not this horrible usurper from the USA, trick or treat...in those days it just involved:
a)making a lantern out of a pumpkin(or was it a turnip as there were no pumpkins?...) complete with a lit candle in the middle of the face ...then you could knock on a door and say:
the sky is blue,
the grass is green,
have you got a penny
for halloween?
if you got a penny then that was fantastic:a trip to the cinema for 2, fish and chip supper and still have change for 20 woodbines...
the only thing to watch out for was horrible ruffians and bounders from down the bottom end who came out zombie like on this night with the soul purpose of blowing out the candle in the turnip/pumpkin and spoiling the fun...
I don't even think we went knocking on doors, we just wandered the streets with the lanterns which increasingly smelt of scorched turnip as the night went on and the lid burned.
ReplyDeleteIt was traditional to "knock" the turnips from the farm at Kenton Bank Foot. It was also traditional for the farmer to catch us and give us a bollocking.
There was a large heap of turnips in the corner of the yard which were recovered ill gotten gains.
"Teflon Stewart" managed to avoid getting caught by legging it and hiding in the culvert under the railway line.
Mrs. Shades insists that what we called Turnips were actually Suede- but there again she is from Manchester.
ReplyDeleteWe had a nickname for them, but I cant quite remember...was it snadjas?...or am I thinking of that posh kid from Wyndham way who got caught by Morton in mid flight at Tommy Moores in the corridor, punching a hole in the roof?(Snadge)...unfortunatly for him we had just got hold of the little rat(he looked a bit like Barry Manilow) and felt-tip penned a clown smile, groucho Marx moustache and glasses on his face before his act of vandalism, so when Mr Morton got hold of him and started finger punched him in the chest whilst bellowing at him on the stupidity of his ways he appeared to be grinning constantly back at him which just incensed and enraged Mortan further...and made the punishment more severe...Snadge's true face no doubt was one of utter terror and anguish...anyway, back to the subject of turnips:the scottish call them(turnips)'neeps' and a mackem I once had the misfortune to know,'narkys'...
ReplyDeleteMorrissey recorded a great song called 'suadehead' and he is from Manchester...
ReplyDeletesomeone told me the little rat(Snadge) became a pilot...
ReplyDeleteTurnips, especially those stolen from the farmer's fields to the north of the estate between Kenton Bar and the airport were termed "snadgers" and the activity was called "snadging". I think everyone at some point got caught and threatened with the police - even me. I however ran away. Some kids got caught off the farm boys and ended up getting a good kicking instead of the police.
ReplyDeleteMorrissey is a whining twat though. Please don't mention his name again - veggie loving geek.
ReplyDelete